At the end of June 2018 Veolia reached an incredible milestone in Lyon, France: Finding and fixing 1,000 leaks with the automatic leak detection system rolled out across the Grand Lyon area throughout the year 2015. GUTERMANN’s ZONESCAN AMI loggers play a vital role in achieving this fantastic performance.
Fast rewind to 2013: Veolia, the world’s largest water management company was busy putting together a project plan to win (another) 8-year management mandate by the city of Lyon to manage all water aspects of the Grand Lyon area. Veolia’s bid was mainly based on two pillars: (1) installing more than 400,000 smart meters across the metropolis, and (2) reducing the leak losses from more than 21% at the time to below the regulatory target of 15%. In fact, Veolia set its own target of 13% by 2018. Veolia had tested several leak detection technologies and decided to partner exclusively with GUTERMANN for the leak detection part. What’s more, Veolia intended to collect both the acoustic data from the leak sensors and the meter data with the same AMI platform, using their in-house capabilities from Homerider Systems (today: Birdz). This grand plan convinced the authorities: Veolia won the EUR 800 million contract at the end of 2013 and created the dedicated subsidiary Eau du Grand Lyon.
Next: Veolia set out to integrate GUTERMANN’s ZONESCAN AMI loggers into custom-designed AMI radio modules from Homerider capable of transmitting the large data packs from the loggers and time-synchronising these recordings to a mili-second in order to be able to correlate. Those radio modules would sit inside custom-manufactured RF permeable composite chamber lids. From February to November 2015 Veolia installed 5,500 such leak detection “measurement points”. At the same time, the company developed its centralised control room platform HublâO (see picture) which collects all data from the field and allows 24 hour surveillance of the network and immediate emergency intervention in case of problems. This platform is today the benchmark for smart city developments in the water space. GUTERMANNâs leak detection solution ZONESCAN Net forms an integral part of this control room and provides near-real time leak intelligence and leak alarms/events.
Today: Over the course of 2015 to 2018 the Veolia operators have identified and repaired hundreds of leaks every year, and Grand Lyon’s water efficiency (“rendement”) has well overachieved its initial target. GUTERMANN is proud to be an important partner in this fantastic achievement!
